Posts Tagged ‘Clare’
Last Sunday’s All Ireland quarter final between Tipperary and Galway has raised the bar in terms of quality for the year, but if any game this year is likely to match that Croke Park clash for intensity and quality, there’s a good chance that it will be tomorrow night’s Munster under-21 decider in Thurles between Clare and Tipperary. With Galway hurling at a low ebb and their under 21′s shorn of a lot of their better performers from recent seasons, the winners of this clash are by far the most likely winners of the All Ireland title, and the bookies have made it clear who they expect to progress into the All Ireland semi-finals, installing Tipperary as 2/5 favourites.
Both these counties came back from difficult situations in their Munster semi-finals, eventually justifying favouritism after Cork and Limerick put in very good efforts at upsetting the odds. Tipperary in particular looked to be in real trouble after conceding seven points on the bounce midway through the second half, only to salvage extra time and eventually go on to take the honours in extra time. Clare looked weak in the opening stages against Limerick and fell behind early on, but they reeled their neighbours back in by half time and then edged a tit for tat battle that lasted throughout the second half.
Many Clare Supporters felt that their team lacked zip in the early stages due to having played at senior level the weekend previously, and that’s a handicap that Tipperary will have to overcome this weekend. Lar Corbett’s late winning score was invaluable to the under-21 management in that it meant that this team was coming in on a high without having had to go through the ordeal of extra time, and every one of the under 21 players in the senior line up put in a very solid display of hurling. As obstacles go, having played last Sunday should not prove too severe.
Of much more relevance however is the fact that this Clare team have had some time to work together and to develop as a coherent unit, time that Liam Sheedy could not afford to grant to the Premier county under-21′s. Many of this Clare panel are already well used to each other from playing together in 2009, however there are also a lot of new recruits in this lineup and the extra nights of training together will be hugely beneficial. At senior level there is a big gulf between these two counties, but at under 21 that gap narrows significantly. Both these counties have plenty of representatives at senior level – but for Tipperary, the under 21 players are adding depth to the team – in Clare, the younger hurlers are the leaders of the senior team, with guys like Caimín Morey, John Conlon and Darach Honan all star names on the Banner senior squad.
With more training under their belts, the experience of winning in 2009 and a big open playing surface that will suit their extremely mobile forward line, Clare have every reason to believe that they can give Tipperary a thorough examination of their hurling tomorrow evening. 2/5 is way too short about a side that granted, was an excellent minor team three years ago, but also showed against a relatively unheralded Cork team that they have a lot of improvement to do yet. A 3pt bet on Clare at 9/4 to beat Tipperary in the Munster under 21 hurling final is the recommendation of this column.
After a dismal weekend for the senior hurlers of both Clare and Limerick, it falls to the under-21 hurlers of each county to try and salvage something for the season when they compete for a place in the Munster final tomorrow night in the Gaelic Grounds. After a long and lean decade when they failed to win a Munster title at either age group, the fortunes of Clare underage hurling have turned around in the last twelve months and their All Ireland under-21 championship last year has heightened the sense of optimism in the county that better days may lie ahead. A minor title was also banked by the Banner county last Sunday and their status as 1/4 favourites in advance of tomorrow night’s game is unsurprising to those who would might simply look at the bare form of the match.
Looking back to the minor championship of three years ago would be little help either since both teams exited that championship tamely at the hands of Tipperary, who went on to win the All Ireland.
Eight football qualifiers and two provincial showpiece finals take place this weekend, but none are as likely to go down to the wire as the hurling qualifier match between Dublin and Clare this Saturday afternoon. Supporters of both counties could be said to be hopeful but not confident as they prepare for a match which should tell a lot about where each team stands in the greater scheme of things.
In 2009 these two counties met in the National Hurling league in Parnell Park and the spoils were shared on a day when a draw was of little use to either team. The 0-15 to 0-15 stalemate meant that Clare were guaranteed to drop into division two, while Dublin lost their chance of reaching a division one league final. At the time, Clare’s better championship track record would have ensured that they would have carried the favourites’ tag into any championship meeting that year, but events since then have made people think twice about that status.
Usually by the end of round three, the betting for the National Football Leagues begins to look a lot simpler. In most divisions, as many as three or four counties would normally be out of the running by now, but unusually this season, very few counties are out of contention while equally, very few are still safe from the drop – notwithstanding those counties playing division four football.
Taking a helicopter view and looking down at division one first, Cork head the betting at 11/10, but this column can only speculate that there must have been plenty of money laid down on the Munster champions because this is a very short price, factoring in the football we’ve seen so far. They scraped home against Monaghan, beat a Kerry team that was very much in pre-season mode and very nearly let a huge lead slip against Galway last Saturday night on their home turf. Cork undoubtedly have ample quality, but Conor Counihan and most of the Cork supporters will know that to even win this league, much more will be required in the coming weeks.
Marketing gurus would probably look at the GAA starting their season up against the Six Nations and think that such madness leaves county boards with no chance of packing out their grounds. Certainly this column has often mentioned how a little bit more promotion and indeed a little better promotion from the mandarins in Croke Park certainly wouldn’t go amiss at times, but then you look at the action we were treated to at the weekend and you realise that in the main, Gaelic Games promote themselves. The light is kept under a basket, but even couch potatoes were well treated at the weekend with a wide range of top quality action on display.
The meeting of Derry and Tyrone was very hard fought, with plenty of excellent scores and fast paced play to savour, Meath and Armagh was a roller coaster ride which could have gone either way at the end, and Dublin went to Killarney and really put it up to the All Ireland champions in another very keenly fought contest. Cork and Monaghan played out an incredible shoutout up in Ulster, while there were plenty of other tense finishes and strong performances to savour all over the country.
Having previewed divisions one and two already, it’s now time to look at the eight games taking place in divisions three and four this weekend and hopefully isolate the teams that may offer a little bit of betting value.
The first game to throw in out of the eight is the meeting of London and Limerick in Ruislip, and one has to feel very sorry for Limerick in this game. They were quite unlucky to drop to division four last year and but for a point here or there, they could easily have retained their place in a quite competitive division three. Their subsequent championship performances proved that they would be quite comfortable in that environment, but instead they must now play in what is likely to be a very scrappy encounter in Ruislip which will be of little benefit to the team other than as a good social occasion.
After the glamour and the tension of last Sunday’s final, we come back closer to Earth this weekend with the Under 21 hurling final the highlight of the weekend. We say closer rather than the whole way back to Earth since it still has the potential to be a pretty fantastic match up.
This Clare team have done their county proud this season with a string of fine performances. They had a good local derby win over Limerick before securing the Munster Title that they probably deserved in 2008 with a great win over Waterford in Fraher Field. Against Galway in the semi final they stepped up the intensity another notch and came away with a memorable win despite the best efforts of Joe Canning.
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” – Voltaire.
Your writer has dabbled in several careers in his assorted past lives, however theologian is one that has yet to be experimented with. Whether an absence of such experience is a blessing or a curse is another matter, but rest assured that we are not about to get overtly religious on you all of a sudden.
The reason we open with the above quote is that it offers a quite apt, if somewhat disproportionate, parallel to the world of intercounty hurling today. Ever since the halcyon days of the 1990′s when the nouveau riche created a new world order, the traditional hegemony of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary has slowly resumed their stranglehold on the sport to the point whereby they regularly fill the top three spots in the betting for the Liam McCarthy cup. Indeed many people even argue that Tipperary have lost the right to be included in such lofty company, after failing to reach hurling’s showpiece since 2001 when they edged out Galway by three points.
The last round of the national football league invariably throws up three different types of fixtures. There are the games where both teams have something to play for – Cork vs Armagh being one of the more obvious examples – the games where one team is still competing while the other is already thinking of the championship, and the games where both sides have their league fate decided and starting places for the championship are the main talking point.
Ever since Ger Loughnane took managerial mind games to a whole new level in his time at the helm of Clarre, hurling managers have shown a lot more reluctance than their footballing counterparts to show their hand in advance of a big game. As such it’s probably no surprise that even now, on Saturday morning, we’ve yet to hear the lineups of several of the main protagonists in this weekend’s games. That said, we still have more than enough information to try to consolidate the gains from midweek as the bookmakers appear to have left more than a chink of light shining through for us to follow.
